


Aftertaste

by ironterrortrain



Category: Hello Charlotte (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, Drug Use, Gen, M/M, Mixed Emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 12:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16174988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironterrortrain/pseuds/ironterrortrain
Summary: Bennett briefly ponders the source of his addiction.





	Aftertaste

When Henry had retrieved the first bottle from inside of his coat, I didn’t bother asking how or why he had it. Even though I was only a child, I knew full well it hadn’t been obtained through legal means, just as I hadn’t. Still, I chugged it down it all the same when he handed it to me, as if I were an old man dying of thirst. After all, I was always told to take whatever the doctors gave me, even if they gave me poison. Apparently, this poison was citrus-flavored.

There were many times when he would just watch me drink in silence, his expression unreadable despite his constant smile. I’m sure he found it funny, a fully grown adult with a degree watching a scrawny twelve year-old lab rat inhale a bottle full of mind-numbing drugs like it was nothing. What a creep, most people would say. But I didn’t care, and I would ignore him and whatever weird shit he'd spout every time. I drank and drank until I would eventually pass out, all the irritation and clarity and consciousness melting its way out of my body and onto the couch. It was a euphoria that made even Henry’s normally obnoxious words sound like butter.

Other times, he would drink with me. Those times were even more strange.

I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t already a lunatic off the soap. Between the two of us, he was the one would always go off on tangents, speak at a million miles per hour, and act all excited over the mundane. He was a man completely devoid of morality and self restraint; it wasn’t a secret.

The high that we–myself, Florence, and a few other pit stops Henry picked up–got off the soap was intense and intoxicating, making even the most traumatized of the lab workers (as we would eventually become) a bunch of happy wind-up toys. Even for me, the kid who'd kick and struggle and break things in retaliation, the soap pacified my most basic train of thought like a liquid blow dart. Unfortunately, my body wasn't full of molasses like my brain was. It felt like swallowing a hornet’s nest, the way I could feel my pulse racing in my fingertips and my words tumbling out of my mouth like an assembly line. 

The first few times, I was sure I had never asked so many stupid questions in my life. The bastard never seemed to mind though, and I hated him for it.

At first, I thought that Huxley was immune to the narcotics he fed us. The way he spoke, moved, behaved... It all seemed completely normal for a while. I had been convinced he was keeping a dud for himself, just to bait me to drink.

I was wrong; I simply had to pay a bit more attention.

Henry was a man dedicated to his research, stiff and clinical despite his mania. It pissed me off at times because it felt like talking to a robot, unable to read the atmosphere. But... after a few drops of soap, I noticed he would start asking me weird things. Things like my _feelings_ , about Überia, if I had seen a particular film that we both knew I hadn’t because it was reserved exclusively for A-types on good behavior. I took whatever he threw at me, even when it was beyond ridiculous.

I’d watch him loosen his tie and recline on the couch he had taken from one of the recreational facilities, looking at nothing in particular and smiling in a way that seemed almost genuine. Sometimes he’d smile and laugh at a memory unspoken. And sometimes... he’d smile at me, loose-lipped and with teeth. I had to look away.

Long after the high wore off, sometimes I would lie in my cell and remember the face hiding underneath that clunky gasmask and the arm around my shoulders. 

Nowadays, he won’t touch the stuff, preferring to hole himself up with his work for days, weeks even. I hear his health’s beginning to fail, that there’s something wrong with his brain, but I don’t know the details–none of us do, not yet. It's ironic, but nobody's laughing. All I know is that the honey in his voice has since grown hard and cold, and sometimes he ignores us all entirely. It’s surreal and out of character, and I know I’m not supposed to care. He’s just busy, no big deal.

And so here I am, drinking enough for two of us.

**Author's Note:**

> a short drabble i started writing in school that's been sitting on my phone for a few months; i tried to make the shippy aspect of it more vague (mostly re: bennett's feelings rather than huxley's), since i like to think his feelings about hux are kind of mixed haha.


End file.
